The Big Read....

[tabaqui]

6 out of 100, blah blah. I'm sure you've all seen it 'round your flists, but i just....felt like doing it. I know! It's scary! A world gone mad! But, fun fun.

I'm only going to bold the ones i've read and leave plain the ones i haven't. I might inject a comment or two. We shall see!
:)



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *didn't finish it. just...couldn't slog through.*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible*also didn't finish. for the same reason as i didn't finish LotR.*
7 Wuthering Heights
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *not all of them, but a lot.*
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *loathed*
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *loathed, loathed, loathed*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden *didn't finish because, dear gods. so freaking depressing.*
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown *i'm ashamed to admit to it. my sister loaned it. loathed.*
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving3
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac5
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So, there you have it. :)
*goes back to typing in Word. yes, yes, i'm writing!*

Comments

[minniemax.livejournal.com]

Why are you ashamed of Da Vinci Code? *iz curious*

[tabaqui]

Absolute and utter trash, pop-'literature' at its worst and probably one of top ten worst books i've ever read. Apologies to any big fans on my flist but dear fucking gods. That book sucked.

[sylvanwitch]

No kidding. Four pages into the book, I've already stopped caring about the main character. Brown couldn't create a character I cared about if he named it Sam and let him shag his brother.

[tabaqui]

Heee!
OH yes.
And omg, the chick, whatever her name was. She had this *horrible trauma*!! as a child, and she'd stopped talking to her uncle over it, and it almost made her swoon or wtf ever and it turns out the 'trauma' is....sex.

Yes, sex as a sort of group...thing or being watched or whatever but still...just plain old het sex. WTF ever.
Loathsome.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

ROTFLMAO!

Will you marry me?

[(Anonymous)]

Mmmm, polygamy.
*approves*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

Yeah!

It totally tastes like vanilla custard!

Whereas monogamy tastes like rhubarb.

[(Anonymous)]

Sadly, I'm already married, but maybe we could start an "I Hate Dan Brown" club. It'd be kinda like the "I Hate Cordelia Club," only with more bitchiness and less destruction of Barbie dolls. ;-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

Sadly, I'm already married,

All the good ones or either taken or straight--or takenly straight.

but maybe we could start an "I Hate Dan Brown" club.

Sweet! But only if I get to be Treasurer.

It'd be kinda like the "I Hate Cordelia Club," only with more bitchiness and less destruction of Barbie dolls. ;-)

Wait--less distruction of Barbie Dolls?

I dunno. . . .

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

But Gatsby! She's paralyzed with happiness! *never read it but got quoted that a bajillion times*

[tabaqui]

Oh, *gads*. I hated that book so damn much. Sheesh.

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

XD Thankfully I never had that particular English class. *sudden subject change* Sadly I can never get into Jane Austen though, I know it's supposed to be commentary but like Dorothy Parker did it so much better. :3

[tabaqui]

I read some pretty damn boring, dry, and just...useless 'classic' literature in school.

I love JA but yes, she's an acquired taste. :) But quite fun and heartwarming.

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think of stuff I've read like that for school but most of my memory of high school is one great big blur so it's not coming. Plus I adored my senior year English teacher so not so much- no wait, Huck Finn. I practically wanted to cry every time I had to open that book to read more.

She's... I tried her when I was young and it didn't work and then someone suggested it when I was older and I still couldn't get into her. Maybe try her again in a few years.

[tabaqui]

Heee. I remember 'The Crucible', which i did not like, and 'Garp', which i loathed. I found my own reading material in school. I had 'Shogun' and Shakespeare and 'Watership Down' and stuff like Fritz Leiber and Larry Niven...

Some books *do* read better later in life. And then, some things you simply can never enjoy. I've tried LoTR so many times, for years, and just...eh.

But i love 'The Hobbit'. Funny world. :)

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

Crucible! Gawd I wanted to strangle the girls but I rather loved my teacher that year and she made it bearable. She made a lot of things bearable, I also discovered Lord of the Flies and The Scarlet Letter while in her class, oh and Old Man and the Sea. =3

*nods* Yeah while with me I prefer the trilogy over The Hobbit. S'just weird how that works out.

[tabaqui]

Ah ha ha!
See, now, i can't read Hemingway without wanting to punch him. Although yes, Lord of the Flies was very good. Very creepy.

I read 'The Silmarillian', cover to cover, but i'll never do *that* again. I think i must have read 'Little Women' and 'Little Men' and 'Jo's Boys' a hundred times, and still read them now, but i've read all of Bradbury just as often.

*rolls around in books*
:)

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

What do you mean you didn't like The Great Gatsby? *disowns you*

[tabaqui]

HA.
Hate, hate, hate, hate.
Just, dear gods.
Cannot like it. Cannot.

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

Not even for the epic gay love that is Nick/Gatsby?
*sighs*
Or failing that, for the breast being ripped off by a car, like Rahmi does? *snicker*

[tabaqui]

I just.
No.
Blech.

I did like, however, 'Berenice Bobs her Hair'.
:)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

Whoa, someone's boob got ripped off?!!

Clearly, this event takes place after page twenty, or I'd have kept reading!

I've tried four or five times, and each time, I make it through fewer pages. Last time, it was three :/

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

*sigh*
You people make me cry. But yeah. You'd have to slog through most of the book to get to it though.

[kroki-refur.livejournal.com]

Haha, I am actually reading The Great Gatsby right now (as in, I have it open in another window). *shields eyes from potential spoilers in comments*

I'm enjoying it a lot! But I like Catcher in the Rye, too (though not nearly as much as Salinger's other stuff), so clearly we just have different tastes :D.

[tabaqui]

Heeeeee!

Oh, yes, clearly on some things, 'cause i could live forever and happily *never* read those books again.

:)

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

So many books, so little memory of them. It's sad--but also thrifty, 'cause it means I can read a book umpty million times and enjoy it!

You're writing--me too! I finally got over the hump in that SpN story I was working on (you know the one), but decided to cut it way shorter than what I had planned. Because I want to mix my two fandoms in a new fic, yay! Won't that be fun? Maybe? You'd think more SV folks would love SpN, wouldn't you?

[tabaqui]

Heeee!
I have the same problem, only with fic! Ah well. I tend to read my favorite books over and over again, so i really get my money's worth.
:)

I'm appalled at how few SV fans are fans of SPN! It's awesome! Our boys are just as pretty! if not prettier!

You should so write xover fic!
*dances you*

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

Listen...*looks over both shoulders* Just between you and me and never repeat this...*shifty-eyes* As much as I ADORE Lex, and want to wrap Clark up in some pancakes and eat him with jam, Dean is the M-Effing Hotness!!!

And I am. And going to force everyone on my list to read it...if I shove Lucas and Whitney in it just might work...*G*

[tabaqui]

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Yis. Dean? He is to die for.
:)

*bounce*
Can't wait for fic! Rillytruly.

[laazikaat.livejournal.com]

Not many of the books on that list appeal to me at all.

Keep writing. I enjoy your stuff more.

BTW, all the changes to your pages on Spander Files are done, so let me know if you spot anything wrong.

[tabaqui]

Hehe.
Some of them rock, some suck. I'm always open for something new.
:)

I'll give it a look-see, thanks for the update!

[sylvanwitch]

On the other hand...

If you hated Gatsby you obviously didn't have the right teacher. Seriously. I've taught the book a dozen times and it still makes my heart race to talk about the last three paragraphs.

If I ever get the chance, I'd love to make you like it. I could, too. ;-)

[tabaqui]

Heeeeee.
I dunno. Maybe it's the style? Or the content? I'm not sure. I just...never grokked it.

I'm not averse to trying again - hell, i've tried LoTR about six times...
:)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

I agree with you: Gatsby is Sominex in book form (prose not nearly as interesting as yours, lacking all gorgeousness, though admittedly I've never made it past twenty pages. Then again, if you can't win someone in twenty pages, you won't do it in one hundred and twenty).

But LoTR?!!!!

That was the trilogy that blew my mind wide open. I never liked fantasy before that. I'd only read period pieces (YA, but still) and sci-fi. But my seventh grade English teacher gave me a copy of Fellowship, and I was lost. I think she knew I would be, too.

How, how can you not like LoTR? All the cool shit that doesn't even make it into the movies/animated whose-its? Tom Bombadil, the Barrow Wights--hah! that fucker, Ted Sandyman. All the awesome stuff. . . .

"The Hobbit" Mescaline, but LoTR, was . . . twelve hits of LSD.

[tabaqui]

OMFG. LotR just went on. And on. And *on*. Dear lord. I didn't *care* anymore about ...any of it! Just too much *stuff*, and too many names, and just - dear lord.

I got through 'The Silmarillion' and i think that's quite enough, thank you.
:)

[zowiebwalker.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would you kill me if i said i hate jd salinger? And i've read all the books, b/c i thought it was just the catcher in the rye i hated.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would you kill me if i said i hate jd salinger?

No. But I might just give you a big, sloppy kiss on the cheek, though :)


And i've read all the books, b/c i thought it was just the catcher in the rye i ha

His other works are . . . dull, but Catcher is dull and obnoxious. Though for some reason, I was addicted to it when I was sixteen/seventeen. Luckily, my taste evolved some, lol.

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend 9 and 19. I also recall liking 82, although I couldn't tell you much about it now.

[tabaqui]

I've heard good things about nine, as well. The premise of 19 depressed me, so i dunno if i'd ever pick it up or not, heh.

82 is totally new to me. I'll have to look it up. :)

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

:)

I might not have picked up 19 either, but I got given it as a Christmas present, and I did enjoy it despite the depressing aspect.

His Dark Materials is definitely worth a go, though, imo.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

I just went and did this one myself.

I must confess myself a Gatsby lover, the story's just so-so, but his language is sooo gorgeous that I just want to roll around in it.

I did find the list a bit annoying because it just didn't seem to have any criteria. Heavy on some authors, others conspicuously absent. In some cases I hated the absent ones, but was confused by where they were (or were not...you know what I mean.)

Really, how can you have Dune and not have Stranger in a Strange Land? That's just wrong!

Grumble...

[tabaqui]

Yeah, i thought it was a bit lopsided, vis a vis 'classics' and such. There should be at least *one* Bradbury, and James Tiptree Jr....

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

How can they not have Asimov or Bradbury, Clarke or Heinlein on there, at all?

I don't see the gorgeous in Gatsby. It seemed flat, to me. You know, from my experience of twent pages. . . .
::coughs::

[tabaqui]

It's an odd list, for sure. And yeah, Gastby. Just...no.
*shudder*

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere that someone had described reading "The Great Gatsby" as being like sitting on a cool veranda on a hot summer day sipping mint juleps.

Whenever I think of it, I picture billowing white gauze curtains and divans and languid women. There's just something so pictorial about it for me. Very vivd and evocative.it just speaks to me. I don't necessarily like or agree with what it has to say, but it sends a loud message to me.

I can almost understand skipping SF altogether on a list like that, but why on earth would you have "Dune" hanging out in isolated splendor?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beetle_/]

It's a nice list. Copied and pasted in my own journal (gratuitous post! I've been online for, like three hours!) because I still wanna be you when I grow up :)

So . . . whatcha writin'?

[tabaqui]

Heeeeeeee!
*pinches your cheeks*

Writin' Dean. Having nightmares. Yes yes.
*twirls you*

See 'aftermath' in tags.
*laaaaaaaaa*

[zowiebwalker.livejournal.com]

Will there be more Spander, 'cause i'm your Spander disciple. Can i friend you if i haven't?

[tabaqui]

I imagine that there will be. Just right now i don't have any kind of story for Spander in my head that feels very original or interesting, and i don't want to crib off my own stuff just to put fic out. So - when i've got something actually *good*...
:)

Friend away!